I've been working in games for 10 years, and I really, *really* wish I could agree with you.

Did you know that it's only been in the last few years that review scores and sales started to correlate? Until recently, there was virtually no connection between the review scores of your game and how well it sold, and it's still somewhat tenuous.
(see http://games.venturebeat.com/2009/05/29/does-game-quality-translate-into-better-financial-performance/ and http://www.dreamdawn.com/sh/features/sales_vs_score.php for some backup on that.)

If I could show you a graph of marketing budget vs sales, you'd see that the correlation is much stronger. Making a great game doesn't immediately make people aware of it, and the public isn't the most sophisticated video game consumer.

Remember Daikatana? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikatana (I can't believe I'm posting a wp link in case people on Slashdot don't know what Daikatana is. No one click that.)) It was famous for being over-hyped and a total mess. It looked good once, but by launch anyone who knew about games knew that it would not be good. And it was still a top-10 seller for 3 months on the back of name recognition. Because the majority of game buyers don't know much about games (just like most industries). People had heard of the game, and they forgot that what they heard was a joke, so they bought it. Oh yeah, it had a big marketing budget too...

The reality is, sales (and therefore income) are better correlated to investment in advertising than the game itself. That pains me (as a game designer) deeply, but it's true. Things like this article used to peg my rage meter, but there's no point in getting upset at EA for realizing the way the market works.

Luckily, that's changing. The market is becoming more savvy, and quality is finally becoming important to publishers. I'm not spilling inside secrets when I say that WB is very excited about the high quality of Arkham Asylum. They knew it would be good, but you can never be sure that a game will be great, and their faces light up whenever they talk about it. It's very encouraging to me to see executives this excited about quality; that's new.

It's now common to hear people say things like "They're an 80+ developer" or "We're targetting 85+", which is also really encouraging. People used to talk about making good games, but now it's important that you be able to clearly establish that. It used to be only sales that mattered, but now people are more willing to accept that if you make quality games, the sales will come. That's huge, and you can expect to see it shift more resources from marketing to production, where they belong.

[quote]these things were very normal and standard. [/quote]
Does that matter?

Apologizing for a past mis-deed is taking responsibility for doing something that is wrong. If you don't think the action was wrong that is one thing, but if you are saying the action was wrong, but everyone was doing it back then, that's something different. If we realize that today that action was wrong, it still makes the action wrong. Even if we would have made the same decision with the same information.

I'm not saying a country needs to find "victims" to pay money to or anything, but officially apologizing for a mistake makes it clear that it is something the gov't does not stand for. It also gives them the moral high ground for denouncing another country for doing the same action today without appearing to have a double-standard.

They can say, when we did it we were wrong and you doing it now is wrong.

is it really necessary to spend 3 times your development costs?

Why do you think Budweiser is the number one selling beer in the world? Is it because it's actually the best beer in the world or is it that they spend the most for marketing?
From Anheiser-Busch 11/2008 3rd quarter report:
capital expenditures - 572 million
marketing - over 800 million

Citing two papers doesn't show much. Particularly when you read the abstract for the first citation and it says "Additional climate forcing by changes in the Sun's output of ultraviolet light, and of magnetized plasmas, cannot be ruled out. The suggested mechanisms are, however, too complex to evaluate meaningfully at present."

Yes, that's why I've got an entire section (7b) in the index devoted to the Sun's magnetic field effects on the Earth's climate. And, yes, UV light might be forcing the climate in ways that aren't currently understood. But the Sun is unusually dim right now, especially in UV light. Also, solar output varies primarily on an ~11 year cycle, and the recent warming has been growing for ~40 years. As I've repeatedly explained, the lack of a long-term trend in solar output means that it's probably not responsible for the recent warming.

The second paper you cited says that both CO2 and the natural causes must be accounted for in order to make the current models fit the actual data. In other words CO2 is not the dominate controller.

Of course! As I've been saying repeatedly, climatologists aren't saying that human emissions are completely responsible for everything happening to the climate. It's just that the recent warming can't be explained without including human emissions, which is making up a larger and larger proportion of the overall forcing of the global climate each decade.

I can dig up just as many citations that show that solar output is sufficient. For example http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/235402/global-warming/274834/Variations-in-solar-output Those papers also question the validity of measuring a single portion of the spectrum at the earth surface and ignoring cosmis radiation and sunspot activity.

I can't load that page, but this may be my cable modem's fault. At any rate, your description makes it sound like a retread of Svensmark 1998, which I've discussed already.

There is no longer any company named Maxis. EA published their games for many years but has completely absorbed the company now. Will Wright, the founder of Maxis, doesn't even work there anymore. The Sims 3 is now a first-party EA game by all definitions and, for the record, it is a really fantastic game.

Crap! That should have read:

Maybe this twitter guy is better at this than I am.

The TechCrunch rebuttal to the points of Apple's letter is spot on, but the idea that somehow Google has power over the iPhone, or that Google Voice gives it more power, is nonsense. It's hard to believe Apple really thinks this, or that TechCrunch would accept it as a valid explanation. How does having iPhone users receive calls via their Google Voice number affect the iPhone overall at all? iPhone users still have to use AT&T for their calls? It no longer ties the user strongly to their iPhone phone number, but with number portability that represents no advantage for Apple or AT&T. Having Google manage your calendar and contacts doesn't make any difference to the iPhone in general. Google Voice may give Google more power over individual iPhone users, but not over the iPhone itself.

And all Apple would have left is the browser? No, Apple would still have the industry's most advanced, user-friendly handheld OS and probably a hundred thousand apps, including--if they turn out to popular enough to be a thread--Google Voice. If Google has any power over the iPhone, it stems only from their willingness to pull a Microsoft and withdraw those apps and technologies from the iPhone at some point in the future, such as when it comes time for Apple and Google to renegotiate their license for YouTube, maps, and search. But the flip side is equally true; there's no question that its to Google's advantage to be a prominent part of the smart phone platform likely to cell hundreds of millions over the next five years.

In short, I don't think we've heard the real rationale; certainly TechCrunch didn't provide a believable one. I think it's more likely that Apple perceives Google's calendar and contacts apps as a threat to Mobile Me, which does compete directly with Google. Or that Google Voice potentially interferes with something else Apple considers a unique advantage, perhaps something that they aren't even using yet but is in development. And finally, it's possible that Apple really isn't worried about Google Voice per se, but is worried about opening the door to other challenges to their "no duplication of built-in functionality" rule.

Hell, what about regrowing some hair?

I do find it interesting here that while Comcast is applying caps and otherwise crying about overused networks they are ALSO stuffing my mailbox full of offers for VoIP service.

Google never promised to stand between the blogger and the law. Why should the blogger expect them to?

He is absolutely right, Android is much more likely to be successful in the "the overwhelming majority of cell phones use it" sense than in the "holy shit this is awesome" sense. Of course, Google is aiming for the former not the latter.

"...but Linux is for adults " - eliteism

There's nothing wrong with equal-opportunity elitism. Anyone can learn how to use and run a computer responsibly.

"...which would be the moral equivalent of this overclocking nonsense." - applying morality to a non-moral issue,

The phrase "moral equivalent" has a long history of use in the software field to express the concept of effective equivalence or analogy. You clearly do not write much software.

just uninformed(from someone that actually uses audio software regularly)

Care to elaborate? As I understand it, Linux audio software is improving rapidly, and while it's not quite up to the level of the professional Windows (or Mac) stuff, it's getting close.